Speech by UPU Deputy Director General Pascal Clivaz at the POC Plenary, 18 October 2018.
Chairman of the POC, Mr. Metoki,
Vice-Chairman of the POC, Mr. Kada,
Distinguished Delegates and observers,
Ladies and gentlemen,
On behalf of the International Bureau, I welcome you all to the Plenary meeting of the POC.
Well, here we are, at the fourth session of the POC, halfway through the cycle. The POC is meeting for the first time after the Second UPU Extraordinary Congress held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It was an extremely productive week and many important decisions were made there.
I would like to express my sincere admiration and gratitude to the member countries that participated in the Extraordinary Congress for their close cooperation and a consensus-building spirit that characterized all debates.
Member countries adopted all proposals that came through the POC and CA on the Integrated Product Plan (IPP), with the sole exception of the proposal to make the tracked delivery service mandatory. Instead, the Extraordinary Congress instructed the POC to develop proposals on this service to be further submitted to the 2020 Congress in Côte d'Ivoire.
The Extraordinary Congress achieved a major success by approving, by consensus, a compromise proposal on the Integrated Remuneration Plan (IRP). Over recent months, the topic of remuneration has been a subject of many discussions and debates. We finally reached an important agreement to use the IRP as a roadmap for a sound proposal on an Integrated Remuneration System to be presented at the 2020 Congress.
The Extraordinary Congress also approved the proposals on the UPU reform and now, starting from the next cycle, the POC will have 48 members instead of 40.
Now, we continue our work to achieve our deliverables before the 2020 Congress. The POC has already completed half of the total deliverables planned for the next cycle.
This is an excellent result and I would like to express my appreciation to the Chair of the POC, the Committees and Standing Groups for their hard work and leadership. I would also like to thank the IB secretariat for their tremendous efforts to support the heavy workload that enabled these results.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
We cannot rest on our achievements, as there is still a lot to accomplish before the 2020 Congress in Cote D’Ivoire. I have no doubt you are up for this challenge!
I wish you effective deliberations and a successful outcome of your activities, which are of great strategic importance to the future of the postal sector.